The invention is directed to a hinge having a stop mechanism, which limits the opening angle of the hinge, and a hold mechanism, which holds the hinge at the fully opened position. Thus far, several designs on the hinge with stop and/or catching functions have been proposed, such as those in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 90,500; 165,619; 2,966,697; 3,905,065; and 4,501,045. These proposed designs require either extra components or machining work for performing the stop and/or catching functions. It is substantially costly to machine the parts or to produce extra components attached to a hinge for performing the stop and/or catching functions. Due to the high cost, the use of those proposed designs is limited to specialized purposes with substantial extra budget. This disadvantage prevents these stop hinges from being popularly used in daily life.
Besides the stop and/or hold functions, the adjustable stop-angle function is an alternative improvement of the present invention which requires extra components. A design as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,065 contains a stop mounted on the lower hinge part for angular adjustment about the hinge pin. However, its design involves much machining work on both hinge main body and the extra components which make it too expensive and complicated to be practical in use. The alternative improvement of the present invention can perform the same functions with only two extra innovated components and simpler machining work. Hence, it is more cost effective to use the alternative improvement of the present invention than to use the aforementioned design on the adjustable stop-angle applications.